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MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes describes the challenges of coping with depression

Celina Caesar-Chavannes, no stranger to adversity, joins an increasing number of politicians speaking out about once taboo topics.

For Celina Caesar-Chavannes, there is a power in story-telling. “Owning my depression is my therapy,” she said. And talking about it “gives others permission to talk about mental health as well.”
(Carlos Osorio / Toronto Star file photo)

As a politician who knows depression first-hand, Celina Caesar-Chavannes joins a long list of famous forebears that includes such figures as Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill.

Even so, it remains a relative rarity for a Canadian MP to admit to a mental health condition she knows might be used against her in the toxic worlds of politics and social media.

But Caesar-Chavannes is a woman. She is an immigrant. She is black. She has known grinding poverty. She is a working mother. So she does not appear to shy away from challenges or facing down social misconceptions.

The rookie Liberal member for Whitby published a blog post on The Huffington Post Tuesday describing a recent bout of depression that took her to an Ottawa emergency room and had her sobbing all the way on a train ride home to her GTA riding.

“I had makeup streaming down my face and had to use my dress to wipe my nose,” wrote the parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “I was what one would call a hot mess!”

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Caesar-Chavannes is among a growing number of elected officials willing to speak publicly about what were once taboo subjects, in her case one that in 1972 cost U.S. Senator Thomas Eagleton a vice-presidential nomination when it was learned he had been treated for depression.

Earlier this year, the Australian researcher and former senior political staffer Brenton Prosser posted an essay calling on politicians to be braver in speaking out about mental health challenges they might deal with, in order to stimulate “broad, rigorous and ongoing national debate on the importance of mental health in the community.”

Within the last year or so in Canada, Trudeau has discussed his mother’s bipolar disorder and the effect it had on him as a child, while Conservative MP Michelle Rempel has written and spoken of the “everyday sexism” she and other women face on Parliament Hill and the emotional toll it takes on them.

Rempel wrote that she is routinely called a “bitch” for standing her ground, has her successes ascribed to sexual favours, and describes “my ass being occasionally grabbed as a way to shock me into submission.”

She spoke up, she wrote (in words aimed at men who might participate, smirk or remain silent in the face of such actions), because “if it’s truly 2016 sexism should be your problem to deal with, not simply ours.”

For Caesar-Chavannes, who came to Canada from Grenada with her family at age 2 and is married with three children, there is a power in story-telling.

“Owning my depression is my therapy,” she said.

And talking about it “gives others permission to talk about mental health as well.”

She was diagnosed with depression in mid-2015, she wrote, in the months after she had been defeated in a byelection bid. But the depression this year was different. “I was spiralling out of control and I did not know what to do.”

After arriving home and calling friends, she was taken to a Toronto hospital. She sat in a waiting room for six hours.

“When I finally saw a doctor — who clearly knew that I needed to be an in-patient — there were no beds.”

The weeks and months that followed were filled with erratic behaviour, shortness with staff, disputes with her husband and medication, she wrote.

Her mind turned against her, lashing her with feelings of unworthiness for being “lazy.”

“I should be on top of the world. I have a great job, husband, children and supports. Why is this happening to me?”

In time, with the right medication, yoga, meditation and exercise the depression cleared, she wrote.

She is aware, she wrote, that depression appears in cycles. She’s aware, too, that she might hear comments she doesn’t like as a result of her forthrightness.

But experience has already taught her, she said, that life is not always going to be easy.

“Storms will come through and it may appear that the world is going to end. However, I want you to know, for certain, that the world will continue to spin. . . . ”

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